Study Guides

Overall Structure

1. Level
2. Exercise Set
3. Exercise
4. Phrase

Phrases

Most exercises in the app contain phrases that are complete sentences. This helps you become accustomed to verb conjugations, standard ways of saying things, number and gender agreement, and other important grammatical concepts without explicitly studying them. By practicing complete phrases, you can begin to absorb this understanding automatically.

The exercises are organized to help you work on particular skills one at a time. Some arrange their phrases in specific patterns for a particular learning purpose. These study guides explain that organization and the skills targeted by each exercise, helping you better understand the material you are currently practicing.

Exercises

An exercise is a related collection of phrases that focuses on a particular sentence pattern, verb, or other grammatical category.

Most exercises contain between 15 and 25 phrases. Some present complete stories and contain as many as 50 phrases.

You can open an exercise in the Library and play its phrases manually. You can also load an exercise into the Player to play its phrases automatically.

Exercise Sets

An exercise set groups exercises that are broadly related by topic and difficulty. Each set contains up to seven exercises, and each level contains between six and ten exercise sets.

Levels

There are five levels of exercises. The general idea is that beginners will start with Level 1 and gradually progress through Level 5.

However, everyone has a different learning style and level of knowledge. A language is also too broad to be organized into one definitive sequence of topics. An early topic may depend on a concept that is not introduced until later, so there is no perfect order for learning every skill.

Our natural learning process often involves jumping around. Sometimes you may want a glimpse of an advanced topic so you can see where you are headed. On some days, you may want to focus deeply on one skill; on others, you may prefer to move lightly through a broad range of topics.

For these reasons, the exercises are organized into five general levels, each containing a substantial amount of material. As you practice, you may want to move among them from time to time to develop a broader sense of the different categories and how they are organized.

Levels 1 & 2: Present Tense

An effort was made to keep the exercises in Levels 1 and 2 in the present tense. This allows you to build vocabulary, practice consistent sentence patterns, and become familiar with common Spanish expressions before worrying too much about more advanced topics. A few phrases containing a subjunctive or preterite verb may have slipped through, but nearly all of these exercises use only present tense.

The simple present is the most common tense, but it can sometimes sound awkward when translated literally. For example, in English, we rarely say, “I go to the store” when describing what we are doing right now. However, Voy a la tienda is common in Spanish and can mean “I’m going to the store.”

A more literal Spanish translation of “I am going to the store” uses two verb forms: estoy (“I am”) and yendo (“going”). Estoy yendo a la tienda is grammatically correct, but it requires an understanding of gerunds (-ing forms), an important topic that is not introduced until Level 2.